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'Learning To Do, Doing To Learn': Why Simply Training Isn't Enough

Everyone has a story, HR is the microcosm of company culture that helps you tell it. I want to help you craft your organization's legacy!

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Global corporations, non-profit organizations, booster clubs, sports teams, small businesses — while different in design and objectives, they all have one common goal: achieve results. While the role of human resources varies as much within these different organizational structures as do their individual missions, there exists a common element in the relentless pursuit of results that lead to greater profit, more members and increased awareness. That bond is the organization’s need for a culture rich in innovation and rooted in learning.

Nearly 90 Years Of “Getting It”

The organization formerly known as the Future Farmers of America, now the National FFA Organization, decades ago established a motto, which outlined their objectives as follows: “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve.” While the motto in its entirety has carried the organization forward throughout many times of change in production agriculture, the first two segments, in particular, resonate with companies across industries today.

Organizations have gained the understanding that if they fail to innovate in their products, services and deliverables, they will perish to the emergence of a more agile competitor. Therefore, the organization that wishes to sustain must maintain a culture of creating, thinking, relating and acting in productive ways. The perpetual enhancement of that mentality, by definition, is learning.

Learning to do things better, differently and greater than before requires the merger of theory and practice at some point. Enter the phrase, “doing to learn.” This is where innovative ideas move from the conceptual to the practical — the lab for experimental application.

Fail First, Fail Cheap

My first operations manager at Caterpillar, Inc. understood this “learning to do, doing to learn” concept and implemented the team mantra of “fail first, fail cheap.” Failing first meant constantly working to develop a new idea and experimenting before our competition could. Failing cheap implied that we would be better off failing at an innovative attempt now before our current way of doing business and innovation lag caused us to be outdone by someone else in our market. We were learning what would work and what wouldn’t.

The compnay was also my first exposure to what I refer to as an “Agile HR” model, in which the human resources team functions much like an operational component in its constant prioritization of objectives and response to metrics. Much of this was the result of the innovative approach of an HR manager who introduced our facility to the idea of HR as a business partner through her unwavering commitment to establish and enhance the organization’s learning culture. Training the skills that we had always trained would only yield the same results. Learning, though, would propel us forward.

Training Vs. Learning

So what’s the difference between training and learning if both are designed to achieve a desired result through instruction? The difference lies within not only the approach but also within the process.

In a human resources environment, training often applies to the compliance-related annual requirements such as prohibited harassment, anti-discrimination, safety, etc. From new-hire to-do lists to company-wide requirements, training in pre-determined areas is a standard part of the HR culture. Training follows a formula consisting of three primary components: instruction, retention, repetition. Training follows a specified course of action in a way that has been deemed appropriate or effective.

Learning, on the other hand, introduces the human element of behavior. Learning is focused on the process of passing information in such a way that the recipient engages a level of critical thinking and is equipped with the ability to apply certain aspects of the information to achieve an optimal result. Learning isn’t accomplished via mere repetition of skills in a given scenario; it’s driven by strategic and creative application across a variety of situations.

Domains, Disciplines And Paradigms

The “godfather” of the learning organization and author of the 1994 book The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, Professor Peter Senge, offers a learning framework of three domains: change, action and results. The way I see it, as the cultural nucleus of an organization, HR maintains the ability to influence an organization's behavior as it relates to fostering a learning versus training culture. Borrow from Senge's framework to evaluate your departmental efforts in accordance with the following domains:

• Results: Starting with the why, ask what is the benefit of a behavior-focused approach as opposed to mere repetition. Your organization deserves superior performance, and critical thinking across situations will only amplify your employees' abilities and overall quality. Bottom line, learning at an intellectual and emotional level will enhance your organization’s competitive edge.

• Action: Engrain within your HR culture the constant need to challenge conventional approaches and methods. In alignment with your organizational mission and company values, seek innovation in content delivery and compliance-related asking. As HR touches every employee via process, this perpetual display of innovation will turn the concept of learning into an action-driven example.

• Change: Understand that what your company trained for in the past won’t be good enough to maintain market dominance in the future. Aligning HR with the aspirations of the organization in terms of content delivery and values integration will help set the tone of innovation and growth from the first employee experience. Conceptualize the bigger picture, adapt processes to focus on emotionally-intelligent behavior and make time for root cause analysis and reflection after a system shortfall to support a culture of change and progress.

The first step to learning proliferation will begin with an intense HR process review, as self-awareness and personal mastery will pave the way to a transformative and sustainable change. HR can empower and equip an organizational learning culture through the fostering of the 90-year old sentiment established by a group of future farmers — learning to do, doing to learn.